Microsoft



|Overview | | |“We use Windows Live Spaces to write blogs and share thoughts on class topics. Our professor for |

|Country or Region: United States | | |eighteenth-century British literature loves that we have this forum for discussion.” |

|Industry: Education | | |Katy Farmer, English Major, Missouri Southern State University |

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|Customer Profile | | | |

|Established in 1937, Missouri Southern State | | | |

|University (MSSU) is a state-supported, | | | |

|comprehensive university in Joplin with 5,593| | | |

|students and 211 faculty members. | | | |

| | | | |

|Business Situation | | | |

|MSSU needed to replace its unreliable, | | | |

|resource-intensive e-mail service for | | | |

|students. The university wanted to offer the | | | |

|Web-based mail communication and | | | |

|collaboration services that its students | | | |

|preferred. | | | |

| | | | |

|Solution | | | |

|MSSU chose Microsoft® Live@edu, a suite of | | | |

|Web-based, hosted communication and | | | |

|collaboration services—everything that a | | | |

|student needs to keep organized and stay | | | |

|connected with faculty and friends. | | | |

| | | | |

|Benefits | | | |

|Improves students’ organization skills | | | |

|Fosters collaborative study sessions | | | |

|Improves the learning experience | | | |

|Enables students to store important | | | |

|information | | | |

|Enables a lifelong connection with the | | | |

|university | | | |

| | | |In Joplin, Missouri Southern State University (MSSU) offers students a high-quality education while |

| | | |striving to keep costs down. To reduce spending, the IT department decided to replace its aging, |

| | | |expensive, in-house student e-mail solution with a hosted solution. To provide e-mail and related |

| | | |services for students and alumni, MSSU chose Microsoft® Live@edu, a set of Web-based communication |

| | | |and collaboration services. Students are excited about the new solution’s reliability, as well as the|

| | | |ability to keep their important class materials and communications in one place—the solution offers |

| | | |100 times more storage space per e-mail account and access to online storage with Windows Live™ |

| | | |SkyDrive. Students are using Live@edu to get better organized, improve communications with their |

| | | |professors, and create online study groups so they are better prepared for class. |

| | | | |

| | | |[pic] |

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Situation

Located in Joplin, Missouri Southern State University (MSSU) is a state-supported university with an emphasis on improving students’ global awareness. The university provides academic programs and public service activities that promote international understanding.

As part of its mission, MSSU has always sought to offer the most affordable education of the Missouri state universities, such as through its low per-credit costs and a textbook rental program that reduces the cost of class materials. As part of its student services, MSSU provided a campus-endorsed e-mail service. Originally, Missouri Southern State had a mandatory campus e-mail solution that integrated with its student portal for registration, scheduling, and bill payments as well as with the university’s distance learning software.

“The online services are part of our efforts to reduce paper and postage costs, especially for mailing student invoices,” explains Al Stadler, Director of Infrastructure and Security at Missouri Southern State University. “Overall, our goal has been to provide a set of integrated, Web-based applications for students: A standardized, reliable, campus-endorsed e-mail service that unified and streamlined communications between the university and its student body would be a core part of those services. We have a comprehensive student portal to our online services called LioNet, but our e-mail system was definitely the weakest link in our IT-based student services.”

Missouri Southern State University’s existing system was a Novell GroupWise e-mail solution running on the Novell NetWare operating system. However, there were several problems with the solution. From the students’ perspective, the e-mail service was unreliable and the 50 megabytes of storage per mailbox it provided was not enough space for their important, university-related e-mail messages and class materials.

“Students complained about the solution’s reliability, so we tried to minimize disruption to the students by scheduling maintenance in the middle of the night, but there is never a good time for planned outages,” says Bob Walker, Assistant Vice President of Information Technology Services at Missouri Southern State University. “One of our busiest times for the system was between 23:00 and 01:00. Students are used to having e-mail access whenever they want it.”

From an IT standpoint, the university’s aging servers and the e-mail system itself required a disproportionate amount of resources to maintain. “I spent too much time performing backups, repairing corrupt mailboxes, and changing passwords,” adds Ryan Halstead, Electronic Communication Coordinator, Missouri Southern State University. “Even with our reliability issues, many students want to keep their e-mail addresses after they graduate, which means our support burden grows over time. We needed a more stable, more scalable, and less expensive campus-endorsed e-mail service.”

Needing to reduce spending, and without a capital replacement plan, the IT department simply couldn’t continue with the existing system, which was slated to retire March 2, 2008.

Solution

Challenged by a hard cutoff date for the existing system, Missouri Southern State University began evaluating different options for a replacement e-mail service for its students. The need to reduce costs dictated that the university implement a hosted solution. After comparing Google Apps and Microsoft® Live@edu, Stadler and his colleagues chose Live@edu, a set of university-branded, hosted communication and collaboration services for students that they can keep for life. The new solution provides to each student a Windows Live™ Hotmail® Web-based e-mail account. Other services include Windows Live SkyDrive, which offers secure online storage, and Windows Live Spaces, which supports creating personal spaces and writing blogs.

“Early on, we realized it was difficult to get the right level of personal response at Google. We were redirected often, which told us we could not expect a high level of service,” says Stadler. “We were looking for a long-time partner, and the personal, immediate response we got from our Microsoft contact was really reassuring.”

The team knew that most MSSU students already used the Microsoft Office PowerPoint® presentation graphics program and Microsoft Office Word, and that many had a Hotmail e-mail account. They reasoned that familiarity with those programs would make the transition to the new e-mail service easier. “Students are used to the Microsoft Office programs and the Office Outlook® interface. This is what they will be using in the business world when they graduate,” says Stadler. “Windows Live SkyDrive is compatible with the Microsoft Office programs that the students are using, whereas Google’s online file storage poses file-formatting issues for students. They want to be able to upload and retrieve their PowerPoint presentations and their Word documents without worrying about formatting issues.”

The university made the decision to deploy Live@edu in September 2007 and began to migrate the accounts out of its old system to the new one. “We did the original provisioning out of our system in early November. At that point, we had 15,000 full-time and part-time student accounts ready to go,” explains Halstead. “We ran a short student pilot program to test the service and we had excellent response and no technical issues.”

In December 2007, MSSU announced that Live@edu would be replacing the students’ existing e-mail service, which would be cut off March 2, 2008. In January 2008, when students returned to campus after the holidays, they began to activate their new accounts. “Even given the hard cutoff date, we had very few complaints—only 50 or so calls to our help desk out of the entire student population,” says Halstead. “Everyone took to the new service with enthusiasm.”

Fourth-year computer forensics major Lee Battone agrees: “I was part of the pilot project, and even though it was very new for us, everyone was really positive about the new service.”

The university is promoting Microsoft Live@edu to the students through flyers, posters, and campus activities. The new e-mail service is integrated into the distance learning system and is advertised on the student portal. “We want students to know that Live@edu is more than just hosted e-mail. For instance, we are trying to draw attention to Windows Live SkyDrive with a contest in which students get their friends to send an e-mail to the help desk asking about the SkyDrive component,” says Stadler. “Then, we will do a random draw of all the e-mail messages we received and award prizes, including two Zune® portable media players.”

“I learned about the service through the flyers,” says Katy Farmer, a third-year English major. “As my friends and I used the different services, we realized how much Live@edu has to offer. I found that the instructions were really easy, and we didn’t have any problems getting used to the new account. My friends and I liked the idea of it being a permanent address.”

To educate next year’s first-year and transferring students about the Live@edu communication and collaboration services, the MSSU IT department will mail each student a letter containing a password. To ensure privacy, the admissions office will send out each student’s user ID in a separate letter. Students can sign up for the service by clicking a link on the university’s home page and entering the password.

“With Live@edu, we can handle our growing demand for a lifetime, university-branded set of e-mail and Web-based communication services—without the worry of service, space, licensing, or liability issues,” says Walker. “We all felt a huge burden lifted off our shoulders.”

Benefits

Today, all Missouri Southern State students are mandated to use Microsoft Live@edu. The suite of integrated, Web-based services provides a framework for cohesive communications among students, and between students and faculty. Enhanced communication with faculty is helping students to improve their relationships with professors and their learning outcomes.

“Live@edu has the potential to revitalize the teaching and learning environment at Missouri Southern State,” says Stadler. “There’s so much to offer—expanded storage, calendaring, personalized spaces, and ubiquitous access to online storage. We are only just beginning to see how the students are using the services to work more efficiently and stay connected with faculty and friends.”

Getting Organized

Since Farmer signed up for Live@edu, she’s always on time and never misses a study session. “I set up appointments with my Spanish study group and make arrangements with other students to study for my English classes,” she says. “I sort my e-mail into folders for different teachers and keep my social e-mail in another folder so I don’t have to scroll through my inbox to look for a message.”

And Battone is looking forward to porting all his appointments from his previous e-mail account into his new calendar. He’ll gain quick access to the calendar directly from Windows Live Hotmail. He’ll also be able to send and receive invitations, and share his calendar with friends to keep his social and academic activities organized.

Staying Connected

More than anything else, Battone is excited about the reliability of the new e-mail service, which helps him stay in touch with his professors. Because the faculty’s e-mail addresses are placed on a safe recipients list, student-to-faculty e-mail messages always get through. “Using my Live@edu account, I don’t have to worry if a professor actually got my e-mail,” he says. “It takes all the guesswork out of our communications so we can focus on getting work done.”

Farmer uses Windows Live Spaces to create online collaborative spaces so that she can connect with other students, discuss topics that they are studying, and collaborate on assignments. (See Figure 1.) “English is all about communicating, and with Live@edu we have a mobile, accessible collaborative environment where we share information and discuss novels and poems,” she says. “We use Windows Live Spaces to write blogs and share thoughts on class topics. Our professor for eighteenth-century British literature loves that we have this forum for discussion. I think we are all better prepared for discussions when we arrive.”

Keeping Important Information

Now, MSSU students have inboxes with 100 times the storage of the previous system. The difference for Battone, who receives, on average, 54 megabytes of e-mail every day, is profound. He no longer has to print important documents or store information on portable hard disk drives. “I subscribe to a lot of legal summaries that I want to keep for reference after I graduate,” he says. “I used to have to watch my inbox carefully in case I lost important mail because I was over the limit. Even with all this stored information, I can find what I want quickly with the e-mail search feature that Live@edu offers, which is very useful.”

Farmer also used a portable hard disk drive to store documents that she couldn’t keep in her inbox. “I work with professors who hire students to edit their unpublished work and I would hate to see this sensitive information get lost due to my overflowing inbox. With Live@edu, I never have to worry,” Farmer says. “And when I graduate, it’s important for me to be able to keep those documents as a record. It’s great that we get to keep our e-mail for life, too. I’m looking forward to staying in touch with my friends after I graduate. And professionally, it will be beneficial to keep in contact with my professors, because I really value their opinions about my work.”

Both Farmer and Battone also appreciate the additional online storage available with Windows Live SkyDrive. Battone uses SkyDrive to store papers and access them from any location. Farmer likes to store her documents in SkyDrive in case she forgets to take a paper to class. She can access a document for impromptu study sessions anywhere she has access to the Internet. “With Live@edu, we can be more productive in more places,” she says. “The mobility and easy access are great for students, who are moving around campus all day.”

“With Live@edu, we can proudly offer world-class communication and collaboration services to MSSU students,” concludes Walker. “I’d recommend it to any university in a heartbeat.”

Microsoft Live@edu

The Microsoft Live@edu program provides institutions of higher education and K-12 with a set of free hosted and cobranded collaboration and communication services for students, alumni, and applicants. Offerings include a choice of Windows Live Hotmail or Microsoft Exchange Labs for e-mail, and Microsoft Office Live Workspace, an online space to collaborate on Microsoft Office documents.

For more information about Live@edu, go to:

get.

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“With Live@edu, we can handle our growing demand for a lifetime, university-branded set of e-mail and Web-based communication services—without the worry of service, space, licensing, or liability issues.”

Bob Walker, Assistant Vice President, Information Technology Services, Missouri Southern State University

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[pic]

Figure 1. Students use Windows Live Spaces to create online study groups and write blogs about current assignments.

“With Live@edu, we can proudly offer world-class communication and collaboration services to MSSU students. I’d recommend it to any university in a heartbeat.”

Bob Walker, Assistant Vice President, Information Technology Services, Missouri Southern State University

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| |Software and Services

■ Microsoft Office

− Microsoft Office Outlook 2007

− Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007

− Microsoft Office Word 2007

■ Services

− Microsoft Live@edu

− Windows Live Hotmail

|Hardware

■ Dell PowerEdge server

■ Compaq ProLiant 800 Series server

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This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published March 2008 | | |

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For more information about Missouri Southern State University, call (866) 818-6778 or visit the Web site at: mssu.edu

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